In Limine
by Gil Shalos1
Summary: What if fanfic and reruns are the afterlife for dead TV characters? Claire Kincaid discovers that her life isn’t what she assumed it to be. But is there anything she can do about it now? Rated for coarse language and suggestive themes. J/C
1. Ab Initio

Title: In Limine

Summary: What if fanfic and reruns are the afterlife for dead TV characters? Claire Kincaid discovers that her life isn't what she assumed it to be. But is there anything she can do about it now?

Rating: T for coarse language and suggestive themes.

Disclaimer: I do not own "Law and Order", nor any of the characters therein. I am making no profit from this. None of the fan fictions referenced in this story are real stories.

Characters: Jack McCoy, Claire Kincaid, Lennie Briscoe, Mrs Kincaid, Mac Gellar, extras.

Spoilers: Everything through Season 16.

Thanks: **plkphoto **did an _outstanding_ job betaing this story and it would be far weaker without her help. Any remaining mistakes or failures of judgement are entirely down to me.

* * *

**In Limine**

_In limine (at the threshold) _

* * *

**Ab Initio**

_Ab initio - From the beginning_

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. 

She dreams of her life, not always in the order it happened. Courtrooms, conference rooms, Jack McCoy… more rarely, Ben Stone. It's so vivid that the carpet on the 10th Floor of One Hogan Place still smells of cigarette smoke from the days when ADAs could smoke in the office and almost all did. Adam Schiff is forever putting on his hat and saying something cynical. Jack is … Jack is Jack. Sometimes he makes her want to cry. Sometimes he makes her laugh. Sometimes he makes her want him so much she can barely stand up.

The dreams are always curiously abbreviated. She is at work, eating greasy Chinese food in the conference room over a case file. She is in a bar with Jack, white wine smooth in her mouth as she meets Jack's knowing gaze over the rim of his scotch glass. She is in court, heart pounding as she walks towards the witness stand, pretending a confidence she has only copied from Jack and Ben.

She is never brushing her teeth or in the shower.

From time to time she jogs in Central Park.

She doesn't like that dream. She tries to wake up when it happens.

Awake, she is in a huge cafeteria. It looks institutional. It might be a prison. It might be worse. Claire isn't sure and she's afraid to ask.

Sometime there are other people there. Sometimes Lennie Briscoe is there. Sometimes he isn't.

"I'm only dead sometimes, kiddo," he tells her, and before she can ask him what he means he's gone.

Very rarely, she dreams she is a medical examiner in Boston. Those dreams are the most confusing. Lennie explains to her that she is crossing over into someone else's TV show. That doesn't make sense to Claire, but it seems to make sense to Lennie.

Other dreams, hazy and vague, of a life she thinks she might have had, of a life she's certain she didn't have, of everything in between. She went to Harvard, Yale, NYU. She came first in her year. She barely passed.

She dreams, in a funny misty way, that she leaves Jack and he comes after her and they have an emotional reunion at the top of the Empire State Building.

She dreams that Jack leaves her in an act of heroic self-sacrifice and she finds out she'd pregnant, and eight months later confronts him in court before going into labour and delivering with the help of Danielle Melnick and Sally Bell.

In one dream she spends spent most of the time in the ladies cutting herself with a razor blade before taking an overdose.

_Too weird_. Next time she sees Lennie, she asks him what the hell is going on.

"Fanfic, honey," he says. "Can I have some of those cornflakes?"

"I don't like cornflakes," Claire tells him.

"You can't always have what you want," Lennie says. Claire looks around to see where the food came from, to see if she can get something more to her taste. When she looks back Lennie is gone.

She dreams she saves Jack's career by shredding Diana Hawthorne on the stand. That's a good dream.

She dreams her affair with Judge Thayer comes out and she has to look at the disappointment in Ben's eyes. That's not so good.

She dreams Jack takes her away on a Caribbean holiday and they have sex all day every day for a week, a kind of indistinct sex that doesn't seem to involve actual genitals. That's an _extremely _good dream, even without the genitals, although once Claire finds herself holding Jack's hand while he swims in the pool two hundred yards away. That kind of creeps her out.

"Fanfic, honey," Lennie tells her from the cabana.

She eats more cornflakes. She really hates cornflakes.

She dreams she and Jack get married and bring up his daughter together and have two kids of their own and she gives up law and stays home baking cookies. She wakes up from that one feeling as if she is covered with hives, thinking that cornflakes aren't so bad after all.

"Just be glad you're a woman," Lennie tells her. "If I have to 'comfort' the DA again I'll stick a spork in my eye."

Claire inhales a cornflake. When she finishes coughing Lennie is gone again.

"What do you mean, 'only dead sometimes'?" she asks him when he comes back. "Am I dead all the time?"

He sighs. "Honey, do you remember the accident?"

_The accident_. That's what comes after she goes jogging. _Bright light – horn – _

"It's okay, it's okay, kiddo, it's okay." Lennie's arms are around her and Claire realises she is sobbing hysterically. She makes herself take a deep breath and calm down. _Think this through. If you learnt anything from Ben and Jack, it's to use your head and think things through. _

"So I'm dead," Claire says. "Is this the afterlife? It doesn't feel like the afterlife. It feels like a lunchroom."

"It's kind of a green room. A green room for dead characters."

"Characters?"

Lennie sighs again. "Claire, honey, I don't know how to tell you this, but – you aren't real. Neither am I. We're characters in TV show, and the writers killed you off in a car accident when the actress who played you went on to do her own show."

"The actress who _played_ me?" Claire asks, feeling hysteria threaten again. "I'm not real? I'm not a person? What about the dreams? I _dream _I'm real."

"Those are re-runs," Lennie says.

"And the other dreams? The fuzzy ones? The ones where I went to the wrong university? The ones about – about, you know?" Claire can't bring herself to say _the dreams about all the sex_ to Lennie.

"Fanfic," Lennie says. "All those people who watched you in the show who don't want it to be over and write their own version of you, of your life off screen, of things that might have happened if you hadn't died."

"I'm dreaming other people's stories? Other people writing about me?"

"Well, they love you," Lennie says, but now Claire is having trouble getting her breath. "Claire honey, I'm sorry."

But it's too much. _Too much_. Claire closes her eyes and goes away.

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	2. Ab Intra

* * *

**Ab Intra **

_Ab intra - From within_

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. 

She dreams of her old life. She dreams of courtrooms, of cross-examinations, of arraignments and grand juries.

She dreams of the first time she saw Jack McCoy give a closing argument in a case he really believed in. When he turns back to the bar table, vivid and alive, and their eyes meet, she feels again as if a finger of lighting has reached out of the sky and electrified every square inch of her skin.

She dreams she is in a car with Jack and they are arguing and then he gets out and –

Claire skips out of that dream quick smart.

She can't avoid knowing what Lennie told her - self-delusion has never been Claire's strong suit. But now that she knows what the dreams are and what the difference is between them, she finds she can pick and choose between them, dodging out of the ones she doesn't like.

Claire spends quite a long time having blurry non-genital sex with Jack in the Caribbean and working on her tan. The tan never gets very good and eventually she gets tired of the indistinct not-quite touching. Dodging a couple of dreams that have her spending a decade in a coma after the accident, Claire visits a few of Jack's best cross-examinations and courtroom moments. Then she wanders through the world of fanfic for a while.

She dreams she is a ghost who saves Jack from certain death in a house fire.

She dreams she is a ghost who lures Jack to his death on a busy highway so they can be united forever. It's all very soft-focus and painless and then Claire thinks, _Jack dying,_ with a bolt of panic and grief and the scene comes sharp and so real she can smell the rain evaporating off the blacktop as the Yamaha fails to take the corner. The noise as the bike hits the safety rail is louder than Claire would have believed possible if it didn't remind her of –

Claire refuses to think about what it reminds her of. She runs, insubstantial and transparent, through the cars pulling up to where Jack lies crumpled, half under the bike. She can't see his face through the helmet. Her ghostly hands can't lift the visor. She tries to tell him that she's there, that she's with him, but her voice is as soundless as the sobs tearing through her. He's screaming in pain and then he starts choking behind the visor and Claire hears herself howling, _no no no _and –

She dreams she is having a drink with Jack in his office after a long day in court. She sits on the couch, then suddenly finds herself standing by the door again. She sits on the couch again. Her glass is empty. For some reason she is drinking Jack's whiskey out of a pint glass. She looks up to comment on it and sees Jack looking at her in a way that she has never seen before. Her blood runs cold. She sees the knife in his hand. "If I can't have you, Claire," he says, "no-one will."

Suddenly Claire is a lot more angry than she is scared. This is _Jack_. This is _her Jack McCoy, _who five minutes ago was dying in her insubstantial arms. "How dare you!" she cries, not sure who she's addressing. "This is _Jack_. He would never – he would _never_!"

Jack takes another step towards her and then suddenly drops the knife. "My god, Claire," he says, sounding dazed, and she sees horror in his eyes – eyes that seem much clearer to her than is usual in a fanfic-born dream, as clear as the rain had been, glistening on the broken headlight of the Yamaha bike. "My god, I was – I would – "

Claire grabs hold of him and puts her arms around him. "It wasn't you, it wasn't you, I promise," she tells him, feeling him almost real and solid in her arms. It's almost like being awake. It's almost like being alive.

"That's not what I meant to write," says a disembodied voice in her ear, sounding puzzled, and suddenly Claire is whipped out of Jack's office and back to the cafeteria.

"Goddammit!" she says, and throws the bowl of cornflakes on the floor.

"Fanfic not so much fun any more?" Lennie asks.

"I don't want to be dreaming someone else's fantasy, Lennie, I want my life back, I want to be with Jack, _really_ with Jack, with the _real _Jack." Claire is too angry to cry.

"It doesn't work that way, sweetie," Lennie tells her. "If it did, don't you think I'd be spending more time at the opera with Liz Rodgers?"

"It's nothing like my life! It's all _sex_, and _crying_ and secret babies!"

Lennie shrugs. "Pick and choose, honey. Or choose and pick."

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	3. Ad Hoc

**

* * *

**

**Ad Hoc **

_Ad hoc - Improvised, impromptu_

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. She is dreaming but now she knows what the dreams are; she is dreaming but now she knows that sometimes she can change the dreams. 

It isn't easy. The narrative wants to carry her along no matter how hard she resists, and Claire often finds words coming out of her mouth that she would never willingly say. Once she calls Jack 'snookums' and she isn't joking.

"Oh, jeez, I gotta brush my teeth," she blurts when she hears the words coming out of her mouth. Suddenly solid, Jack raises his eyebrows. "I'm not surprised," he says.

In the moment when he is clear and solid Claire grabs hold of him and kisses him hard, pressing up against him to feel the whole length of his body against hers, to remember every inch of him. He is surprised but enthusiastically co-operative, finding the spot in the small of her back that has always short-circuited her brain.

"Oh god Jack," Claire groans against his mouth. "Oh god, fuck me now."

"I don't write _pornography_," says a voice in the air, and Jack goes fuzzy and indistinct and starts stroking her hair and crying.

Claire bats his hands away and wakes up.

"So I can control what happens?" she asks Lennie next time she sees him. "I can make it different?"

"If the writers let you," Lennie says, and shrugs. "But, you know, they have their own ideas."

"Let's see…" Claire says, setting her jaw.

She spends an uncountable period of time skipping from fiction to fiction, ad libbing her own lines, forcing the narrative off the track. She learns it's hard work to keep the story going in a new direction. She learns that the sharper the story is originally, the longer she can keep it hard-edged and tangible when she starts changing the plot. The ones that blur in with her own memories are clearest, overlapping with court cases and remembered arguments with Jack.

But she can never make it last. Sooner or later she has to wake up, and eat cornflakes.

"It's all happening in the past," Lennie tells her. "The story moved on without you. There's nowhere for these stories to go."

_The story moved on_.

"What happened?" Claire asks. "In the story. When it moved on."

"We caught a lot of bad guys," Lennie says. "Jack prosecuted them. Some went to jail, some didn't. I got a new partner. Then _he_ got a new partner. Jack had a few new assistants. We went through a coupla DAs. You know, stuff."

"And I was dead," Claire says. She tries to say it bravely but her voice still quivers.

"I'm sorry, honey," Lennie says. "I'm really sorry."

"What about Jack?" Claire asks. "Did he – what happened? To Jack? When I died?"

"Are you sure you want to know, kiddo?" Lennie asks gently. Claire nods and he sighs heavily. "Okay. Jack took it hard. He blamed himself. He hit the bottle pretty hard and he came close to going off the rails, but in the end he held it together."

"Did he – is he – will he - " Claire can't keep her tenses straight. "Meet someone?"

"It's hard to know," Lennie says. "After a while, all the personal stuff just kinda drifted out of the story. I think he was seeing someone. He seemed happier."

Claire tries to smile through the tears streaming down her cheeks. "That's good. I'm glad. It's good he can be happy. Even if I – well. I'm glad. Really."

"It's just how it goes," Lennie says gently. "The story keeps going, even though we stop. The story moved on. Jack moved on. It's how it goes."

"Well, then," Claire says, lifting her chin to pretend she's not terrified, "Maybe I should move on, too."

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	4. In Propria Persona

* * *

**In Propria Persona**

_In propria persona - For one's self; Acting on one's own behalf_

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. 

It takes her a while to find the right dream. She considers and rejects several that involve long comas. She is tempted to find one in which she walks away from the smashed car unscathed, but those are far too blurry.

It takes her a while to realise that all the dreams where she survives are too blurry for her purposes.

She is scared enough to shed a couple of self-pitying tears. Then she pulls herself together and gets on with it.

It's harder than she thought it would be, walking through that long awful day again, every step, knowing all the way what is going to happen. She fights with Jack. She goes for a jog. She talks to Mac. She talks to Anita.

She looks at her pager.

As she steers a drunk Lennie Briscoe into the passenger seat of her car, her courage starts to fail her. Her hands are shaking as she buckles her seatbelt and turns the key in the ignition. Lennie is talking to her. She knows what she has to say. She knows what she says just before the accident. She has to say it.

Her mouth is too dry for words. She looks over at Lennie, and he is looking back at her, suddenly seeming a lot less drunk. He smiles at her, kindly, encouragingly, and holds out his hand.

Claire swallows hard, takes his hand. "Lennie, I doubt your daughter hates you," she says.

"You don't know her," Lennie says. Claire can't keep from crying as the car hurtles forward into the night. "I don't even know her. And I never will."

_Light – noise – pain! _

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	5. Motu Proprio

* * *

**Motu Proprio**

_Motu proprio - Of one's own initiative_

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. She dreams she has been in a terrible accident and is being rushed to surgery at Mercy General. There is an oxygen mask on her face. She pulls it off. 

"Don't kill me!" she screams to empty air. "Don't kill me!"

"No-one's trying to kill you, honey," a nurse says.

"Give me a chance! Give me a chance to show you another story!" Claire pleads. "Give me a chance!"

"Put her under," a doctor orders.

"Don't kill me," Claire whispers, as the drugs take her.

Claire wakes up –

_- with a mouthful of cornflakes_ –

- in a hospital bed.

She hurts all over. She hurts so badly that every breath makes her want to sob in misery.

She is alive.

"You're awake," Jack says. Claire can't bear to turn her head but she cuts her eyes to the right and sees him there by the bedside. "Oh, Claire, honey, you're awake, darling, my little snookums – "

Right then he starts to go blurry.

"No!" Claire screams at the top of her voice. "No! I will _not_ let you!"

Jack is sharp again, frowning, bending over her, pressing the call button. "Claire, can you hear me?" he asks, in the calm, reassuring voice he uses for fragile witnesses. "It's me. It's Jack. Do you know who I am?"

It's the hardest thing she's ever done in her life, but Claire ignores him. "Give me a chance," she pleads to the air. "I promise, the story will be a good one. Just let me – let me show you. Please. _Please_."

Jack is still leaning over her and the nurses are hurrying in and Claire holds her breath, waiting, hoping …

"I must be going crazy," she thinks she hears one of the nurses say. "This is just too weird."

They are fussing around her trying to determine why she's woken up hysterical. Claire strains to see past them to where Jack stands by the window, arms folded, not quite able to look at her and not quite able to look away. "Jack," she says, and he comes a little closer to the bed.

"Are you feeling better, Claire?" one of the nurses asks.

"I was just a little confused,' Claire says. "That's all. Was I in an accident?"

Jack's by the side of the bed now and he puts his hand over hers. His touch is warm and firm and real. "Yeah," he says. "But you're going to be all right, now."

"I know," Claire says. Then she thinks about what 'all right' means and tears fill her eyes. "Stay a while, will you?"

"Sure," Jack says.

She goes to sleep with him holding her hand and then, she doesn't know how long later, wakes with a jolt and –

- _a mouth full of cornflakes - _

- and the room going blurry around her.

Claire focuses hard and makes it come clear, clings on to the pain of her injuries and the unbelievable banality of the hospital décor and forces the soft-focus blurriness away. Jack stops trying to feed her ice-cream and goes back to the briefcase full of work he has with him.

She watches him for a while, the way he frowns over one file, raises his eyebrows at another. The ring on his hand catches the light when he lifts and lowers his pen, or when he pushes his hair back from his forehead. Claire's fingers itch to smooth that unruly lock. Her arms ache to hold him, to feel the flat plane of the muscles of his back beneath her hands, to feel his arms strong around her in return.

But she can hardly move, let alone get out of bed and cross the room and crawl into his lap.

She lies still and watches him and tries to get used to the idea of what she has to do next.

As long as she keeps fighting the story, the cornflakes are only a nap away.

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	6. Lis Pendens

* * *

**Lis Pendens**

_Lis pendens - An action pending_

_

* * *

_

Claire Kincaid is dreaming.

The drugs they keep giving her take her down, ready or not, into a swimming subterranean dark where she's _married to Jack -- in a coma -- in court -- a public defender_ and she fights and fights and fights against them to wake up –

- _eating cornflakes_ -

- in the hospital where her body is slowly healing. Every time it gets harder to bring the room sharp and clear around her.

On the day she wakes and spends half an hour alternately threatening and imploring the invisible author until the flowers disappear from her bedside table and Jack stops declaiming sonnets, Claire knows she can't leave it any longer. She'd thought she had until she could leave the hospital, or at least until she could get out of bed, but she and the story are on a collision course now, and what will happen when they crash will make the demolition of her car look like a clambake in the Hamptons.

Jack is using her bed as an impromptu desk, with papers spread out over her legs as he scribbles notes for a summation on a legal pad balanced on his knee. Claire can stretch out her hand and ruffle his hair.

She doesn't.

"Jack," she says, having planned these words as precisely as any opening statement. "You have to stop coming here."

He looks up. "It's okay," he says. "I don't mind."

"Jack, I don't want you to come here anymore," Claire says carefully and clearly. "I don't want to see you any more. I'm not coming back to the DA's Office. I don't want to be with you anymore."

She's counted on him being too proud to try and change her mind and as it turns out she's right. She's counted on him hiding behind anger and she's right about that too. They've argued in the past and he's said some bitterly hurtful things, but this time Claire knows they're the last words he'll ever speak to her and she feels the weight of them crushing her chest until her heart has barely room to beat.

Just as he's finished shoving his papers into his briefcase and is about to slam out of the room she gathers herself.

"From now on, Jack, just pretend I'm dead," she says.

He turns back and Claire wishes she could tell if he looks at her with tenderness, with grief, with love, but her own vision is blurring and sparking with unshed tears and this last sight she'll ever have of him is hazy and fragmented. "No problem" he says. "To hell with you, anyway."

Claire waits until he's well and truly gone before she lets herself cry. Then she cries and cries, cries until a doctor comes and gives her a needle that takes her back down into dreams. She dreams _Jack holding her_ and _Jack loving her _and _Jack saving her from a crazed defendant_ and as blurrily unsatisfying as the dreams are she doesn't want to wake up, doesn't want the cold and lonely hospital room and the nagging pain of her injuries and life without Jack, with no Jack, no Jack ever again.

But she's come this far.

Claire Kincaid wakes up, and even if her mouth tastes like cornflakes she's in a hospital bed, and it only takes a few minutes this time to get the sheets feeling scratchy. She wonders where Jack is, but in a general sense she knows. Jack is in the story, and the story is moving on.

She wants to see Lennie, but she knows that's not a very good idea. She wants to ask the nurse to bring her a phone so she can call Jack and tell him how much of an idiot she's been and beg him to come back, but she knows that's a terrible idea. She's out of the story now, and she can't stay real unless she stays out of the story.

Every night at around 3 o'clock in the morning Claire isn't sure that staying real is worth it.

Her mother and Mac don't make it easier. They visit every day, and it's better than being alone, and Claire guesses from their persistent solidity that the story has moved on without _them_, too. But neither her mother nor Mac approved of what they suspected about her relationship with Jack, and they're desperate to tell her how right they were, now that he's abandoned her in her hour of need. Claire can't bring herself to explain, but neither can she stand their sideways looks and half-spoken hints.

At first, she's just hoping to change the subject when she tells Mac she's thinking about maybe teaching for a while, that she doesn't feel up to going back into the courtroom, not yet, and what would he suggest? But Mac is full of advice, and helpful contacts, and by the time she is able to get out of bed and walk a few steps around the room Claire has filled in applications for positions at law schools all around the country.

Things are getting blurry again, by then. She's afraid to sleep for more than a few hours at a time in case she wakes up eating cornflakes with Lennie Briscoe. The lack of sleep and the constant watchfulness has her more tired than ever in her life, including cramming for the bar exam or working big trials with Jack.

_Jack…_

When she gets a job offer at the University of Washington in Seattle she signs the papers right away. She has to get away, far away from the story. Her mother cries, but Claire is adamant. By the time she can walk down the hospital corridor her flight is booked.

Her mother and Mac wave goodbye at the departure gate. Out of the corner of her eye Claire thinks she sees – but no. When she looks he's not there. _How could he be? He doesn't even know I'm leaving._

She falls asleep on the plane and wakes up with a start of terror, sure she'll have a mouth full of cornflakes, but she is still on the plane, and her mouth is sticky with nothing but sleep.

It is all she can do not to stand up and scream "Turn the plane around! I made a mistake! A terrible, terrible mistake!" but as she holds onto the tray-table so hard her fingernails leave crescent marks she knows that her renewed willingness to go back and face the exhausting vigilance the last few months have taken is in large part fuelled by the relief of her first deep restful sleep since she woke in hospital.

She can't go back.

She's not a free agent.

She doesn't have the same choices she had before she died.

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	7. Die Ad Diem

* * *

**Die Ad Diem**

_Die ad diem - From day to day_

_

* * *

_

Claire Kincaid is dreaming.

She dreams that she's turned up to teach her class and she's stark naked. The only one who notices is Jack McCoy, who for some reason is in the front row of her first-year lecture. The look he gives her leaves her in no doubt that he's very much in favour of Claire-as-naked-professor.

She wakes up aching for him, with the sour taste of last night's whiskey in her mouth.

A couple of times a month she picks up the phone and punches in his number. She never says anything. Mostly she only gets the machine and sits with her eyes closed listening to him tell her to leave a message. Sometimes he answers and just knowing that for that second they are linked across the continent makes Claire dizzy.

She never speaks.

She drinks whiskey, because the taste of it reminds her of him, because letting that taste slide into her mouth is like kissing him, or as much like kissing him as she'll ever get again.

She drinks whiskey a lot. She drinks a lot of whiskey a lot.

She discovers the Indigo Girls and plays "Ghost" two hundred and fifty seven times in a weekend, ending up lying on her living room floor with a bottle of whiskey in her hand singing "And there's not enough room in this world for my pain" at the top of her voice while her neighbours pound on the wall.

The Dean calls her in for 'a talk' after that. Claire ignores him, nodding in the right places, tasting sour whiskey in her mouth and calculating how long she has to stay here nodding earnestly before she can get out and get another drink.

It's only when he says 'twelve step program' that Claire starts paying attention.

She goes home and looks at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her skin is pasty, her eyes bloodshot, her hair lank.

She doesn't think she's an alcoholic. When she thinks about drinking gin or vodka or beer, there's no kick of anticipation. It's whiskey, Jack's brand, sliding over her lips and into her mouth, caressing her tongue and filling her with warmth, that she wants.

Claire wonders if there's a twelve step program for leaving someone you love so much you feel their absence like a hole in the world beside you.

She wonders what Jack would say if he could see her now, peering blearily into the mirror at eleven am on a Tuesday wondering how long before she can reasonably pour herself another shot.

She wonders if Jack still drinks the same brand of whiskey or if his mouth tastes of something else these days and how long it took him to put the moves on whichever pretty ADA he replaced her with. And if he kisses her, tasting of whiskey, if he says her name the way he used to say Claire's, if he laughs at her jokes, if he takes her to the same restaurants.

The ache inside her is so wide and deep there's no other side to it. She's on the floor crying so hard she can barely breathe and all she can think is that if Jack were here he'd be kind but he'd quickly get impatient with her uncontrollable hysteria. And that all she wants in the whole world is to hear him say 'Come on, Claire, pull yourself together, will you?'

But you can't always get what you want.

In fact, when you've died, you can't ever get what you want.

_I never thought Seattle was the afterlife, _Claire thinks, and imagines Jack's face if she said that to him, and starts to laugh. She sits on the floor of the bathroom crying and laughing and blowing her nose on toilet paper. Eventually she gives in to the inevitable and gets up and washes her face and pulls herself together.

_Pick and choose, honey_, she thinks, looking at her red-rimmed eyes in the mirror. _Or choose and pick_.

She cleans up after that. She starts running every day again. She gets a reputation as a good teacher. She learns that she can trust her instincts on which students will benefit from more attention. She learns that the classroom is a lot like the courtroom and the lessons she learnt from Ben Stone and Jack McCoy work in her new life as well.

_Her new life_.

She still calls him every couple of weeks. Not the same time, or the same day. Often she only gets the machine. Claire wonders if _he_ wonders why he's getting more wrong-number hang-ups. She wonders if he can hear that it's her, down the phone-line, hear her heart beating and beating at the sound of his voice.

She gets expert at interpreting his moods from four or six syllables. _Hello? Who is this? _He sounds tired, even though it's Sunday afternoon. _Hello?_ A little raspy, maybe hung-over. She wonders if this is still the part of the story when he's drowning himself in whiskey to ignore her absence. Or maybe he's already done that and moved on, and the huskiness in his voice is because he's answering the phone on the bedroom extension and there's a woman beside him, saying, _Just hang up, Jack. _

Claire knows she has to stop. Every time she picks up the phone she tells herself that she knows she has to stop.

_Hello?_ _Is there someone there? _

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	8. Non Constat

**

* * *

**

**Non Constat **

_Non constat - It is not certain _

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. She dreams she is sitting in the faculty room eating cornflakes while Mr Ed explains the Supreme Court's decision on non-legal counsel to her. 

"Hey, Kincaid!" Mr Ed says, and Claire wakes with a start. She _is_ in the faculty room, but the table in front of her holds a stack of marking, not breakfast food, and it's Professor Yang calling her, not a talking horse. "Kincaid, you wanna go to Tulsa?"

"What?" Her mouth is gluey with sleep. "Huh?"

"Panel discussion on law and justice," Yang says in his usual rapid-fire shorthand. "Does the adversarial system inhibit the search for truth, blah blah. They want us to send a speaker. Wanna go to Tulsa?"

"Sure," Claire says.

"Cool," Yang says. "You'll be debating Jack McCoy. Didn't you used to work for him?"

Claire hears her own voice saying _yes, once_, hears Yang asking her about Jack and what he's like and if the stories are true, hears herself answer but it's all a long way away and underwater. Her heart is beating so hard it hurts. _Jack. Jack. Jack. _

_I can't go. _

_I have to go. _

_I can't go. _

_I can't **not **go. _

For a week Claire swings between the two. Then she fills in the forms and sends them off and tells herself, _too late now_. Of course, it isn't _too late now_, and she goes through the whole agony again when it's time to book the plane ticket, when she starts preparing notes for the discussion, when she starts packing, when she calls the taxi to take her to the airport, when she checks in …

Wheels up and Claire thinks, _too late now,_ and knows it really is true.

She wonders how he'll look. How she'll look to him. She knows that she's wondering about that to avoid the real questions – questions like: _What the hell are you doing, after all it took you to get away, to be safe? _

After ten minutes primping in the aeroplane toilet, wondering if the lines at the corner of her eyes are as visible in daylight as they seem at the moment and if she should have taken the time to get her hair cut, Claire admits that she's not _only_ avoiding the real questions.

All the way from the airport in Tulsa to the hotel where the conference is being held Claire imagines she can taste cornflakes. A sensible woman would tell the cabbie to turn around and take her back while she's still safe and the world around her is still real.

Claire is not as sensible as she used to be before she made a thousand anonymous phone calls to a familiar Manhattan number. _Safe is overrated. _

The hotel lobby is crowded. Claire hefts her suitcase and heads for the desk to check in. She's taken only a few steps when she sees through the crowd – _I'd know him anywhere_ – Jack McCoy turning away from reception towards the elevators.

Her heart stops.

He looks the same and he looks different. He looks older, and tired, and when he catches sight of her through the crowd as she stands there with her coat in one hand and her suitcase in the other, Claire thinks he looks sadder than she's ever seen him.

She takes a step forward, then another. She's almost halved the distance between them when he blinks, and turns his back on her, and starts to walk away.

Her heart breaks.

For a second she stops still, trying to work out why she's still standing upright and breathing when her heart has shattered into a thousand pieces inside her chest. And then she thinks, _Oh no you don't, mister,_ and she drops her suitcase and coat on the floor and runs. She _runs_.

She catches him at the elevators as he's about to get on and grabs his arm.

"Jack," she says, panting a little.

"Claire," he says distantly. His voice is raspier than the last time she saw him. He sounds the way he sounded on the phone, as if there's still a long-distance phone line between them.

"Excuse me, miss?" Claire turns and one of the bellhops is holding out her coat and bag. "I think you dropped these?"

Claire thanks him and takes them and hears the elevator _bing_ behind her. She spins around and the doors are shutting with Jack on the other side . Claire leaps forwards, shoving her arm in the doors before they can close. The sensors are a little tardy and the doors squeeze her arm hard before they fold back to show Jack with his finger on the button that opens them.

Claire gets into the elevator.

"Are you okay?" Jack asks her, looking at the floor.

"No," Claire says, and Jack looks sharply at her, frowning. It's the same frown that she's seen when testimony doesn't add up or a judge makes a ruling that hurts the People's case, and Claire can't help smiling to see it.

"What's so damn funny?" Jack asks. He sounds exactly like the cranky Jack McCoy of old, and Claire could cry except she's laughing.

And then she thinks, _why not? So what if I disappear again. Is it really so bad? I've had three years of borrowed time._

She turns to Jack and drops her suitcase and grabs him by the lapels of his suit jacket and kisses him.

She doesn't disappear.

He doesn't turn vague and fuzzy.

His body is warm and solid against her and his five-o-clock shadow scratches her cheek and his breath is a little sour from a long day travelling and maybe a couple of drinks on the plane.

Without even a moment's hesitation he's kissing her back, tasting of whiskey. Claire pushes him against the wall of the elevator and bites his lip, and he holds her like a drowning man, like he's trying to imprint the shape of the body on his, like he can draw her closer to him than life itself.

The elevator doors open.

"Is this your floor?" Claire asks him.

"Who cares?" Jack whispers, and takes her face between his hands and kisses her lips, her cheekbone, her eyelid, her lips again. His tongue teases hers and Claire's thoughts scatter, but if she's learnt anything recently, it's to stay focused on what's important.

She pulls herself a little away from Jack. "On your floor is your room," she tells him. "And in your room is your bed. And I think we should go there."

He's always been quick on the uptake. Claire barely has time to grab her bag and coat from the floor where she dropped them before Jack has her by the hand and is towing her down the corridor. They find the right room. Jack curses like a sailor when he drops his key, and Claire is laughing helplessly when he finally gets the door open and pulls her inside.

They don't quite make it to the bed.

* * *

.oOo.

* * *


	9. Uberrimae Fidei

* * *

**Uberrimae Fidei **

_Uberrimae fidei - Of the utmost good faith _

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. 

She dreams she is lying naked in a hotel bed in Tulsa with Jack McCoy.

She wakes up and it's true.

"I called you," she confesses to Jack. He is running his fingers slowly through her hair as she lies in his arms, and Claire feels as if she might be about to start purring like a cat with the pleasure of it, of his touch, of him, _right there_ with her. "A lot."

"I know," Jack says. "You never said anything, though."

"How did you know?" Claire asks.

"I could tell," Jack says. "No-one breathes like you do."

She tilts her head back to look at him, stunned that her imagined connection was real, and he grins down at her and adds, "Also? I have caller ID."

Claire stares at him and then begins to giggle uncontrollably. "Bastard," she gasps, sits up and yanks the pillow from behind him and tries to hit him with it. He fends her off. Then they're wrestling, and he has her pinned down and then they aren't wrestling any more, not exactly …

Later, she rolls over and props herself up on her elbows to look at him. Jack gives her a sleepy grin but when she doesn't return it he sits up a little, blinks himself fully awake.

"I can't come back to the DA's office," Claire says. She can't say to him, _I can't come back to the story. I'll start waking up eating cornflakes if I get in the way of the story. I have stay out of sight. _"I just can't, Jack."

"I know," Jack says. He rolls over and sits all the way up and for a moment Claire thinks he's angry with her, that he's turning his back so she won't see it. Then he takes something from his wallet on the nightstand and lies back down beside her. "I saw this in the paper," he says, gathering her into his arms again. "I cut it out for you." He hands her a newspaper cutting. Claire blinks at it and reads, "Manhattan Women's Refuge -- position available -- in-house attorney."

"I'd be really good at this job," Claire says.

"I know," Jack tells her, running his hand slowly up and down her spine. "You'd be _fantastic_ at that job."

"You cut it out for me?" she asks him.

"Well, I had an ulterior motive when I accepted the speaking invitation." He looks away, as if she's going to be angry with him. "I knew you'd be here. And I thought – I didn't presume _this_, but I thought – maybe I could get you to come back to New York."

"You came to Tulsa to see me?" Claire asks, grinning with delight.

"Yeah," Jack admits.

"I came to Tulsa to see _you_," Claire tells him. Jack stops looking shamefaced and starts looking smug and Claire starts laughing again and leans up to kiss him good and hard.

When she pulls away he's looking serious.

"So will you come back to New York?" he asks.

"You better believe it," Claire says.

"I never knew why you left." He smooths her hair back from her face and then presses his lips to her temple. "I still don't understand why you left."

"I can't tell you," Claire says.

"You couldn't tell me then," Jack says.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I _can't_."

"You left so suddenly," Jack says. "A lot of people think you died in that car accident, you left so fast."

"Let them think that," Claire says. "Let them, please, Jack, I'm serious. I'll come back to New York with you – but not to my old life. That's gone. That woman – let her stay dead. _Please_."

"I don't understand," Jack says, looking puzzled, and a little irritated – because, Claire knows, if there's one thing he really hates it's feeling like someone else knows more than he does.

"Please, Jack," she says again. "_Please_."

He studies her for a long minute, and then she sees him let it go. He kisses her temple again, and then her cheek, and then her lips. "Keep your secrets," he whispers, his lips barely brushing hers. "I know everything I need to."

* * *

.oOo.

.

* * *


	10. Ubi Jus Ibi Remedium

* * *

**Ubi Jus Ibi Remedium**

_Ubi jus ibi remedium - Where (there is) a right, there (is) a remedy _

* * *

Claire Kincaid is dreaming. She dreams she is eating cornflakes in a huge cafeteria with Lennie Briscoe. 

"This is a pretty weird dream," she says to him, and realises he is crying, crying and smiling at the same time.

"You have no idea, kiddo," Lennie says. "You really have no idea." He wipes his eyes with his fingers and gives her the big smile she remembers. "I'm very proud of you, you know that? I'm really, very proud. Don't forget that."

"I won't," Claire says. She can't help smiling back at him, puzzled though she is. She's about to ask him why he's crying and what he means when her phone starts ringing. She looks down to fumble in her pockets but she can't find it. "Lennie, is that your – "

Lennie is gone, and the phone is still ringing.

_Ringing_.

Claire Kincaid wakes up as the ringing cell phone finally stops. She rolls over to see Jack McCoy sitting on the edge of the bed with his phone to his ear, frowning in concentration. "No, don't offer that," he says, "Nothing below Man One."

Claire stretches out her hand and Jack takes it, laces his fingers through hers without looking up, intent on solving some problem back in Manhattan. When he hangs up and turns to her, his smile is replaced by surprise.

"You've been crying," he says, and Claire only then feels the dampness on her cheeks. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Claire says. She pulls him to her, putting her arms around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. "Nothing. I just – I had the strangest dream."

"Well, you're awake now," Jack says, his voice rumbling in his chest beneath her ear. His arms tighten around her and his hand smooths over her hair, finger catching on a tangle. With the twinge of pain Claire feels the last of the dream slip away from her. "You're awake now," Jack tells her again.

"You better believe it," Claire tells him. "You better believe I am."

* * *

_fin_

* * *


End file.
